a homily for Proper 29C
Text: Luke 23:33-43

This is a potent ending to the church year. Jesus on the cross, mocked, brought low beside two criminals. A passage full of questions—like the questions we all bring with us to church.

Questions about…

Jesus—Who is He, what is He? What does He want?
GOD—What is the plan here? How can a father do this to a son? How does this change the world?
Us—What is our role? What am I to believe? Am I on the right path?

And because we don’t really like questions—we prefer clear, concise, simple answers—we are troubled by what is revealed to us here. Jesus leaves the world without answering our questions. Any of them.

In our gospel, Jesus doesn’t answer any of the questions asked. He makes a single statement to one of the men hanging near him:

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Jesus is crowned a king by the Romans and paraded around as a vanquished and overthrown royal leader of a defeated people. He is killed as a rebel, an insurrectionist, a terrorist. And the whole time, they ask Him a really logical question: If you are so powerful, then why don’t you save yourself? He doesn’t answer. We might ask a follow-up question ourselves: If you are so influential, then where is your army?

These aren’t questions of mockery only, but of honest confusion. Because as plans go, this is a pretty terrible one. If Jesus wanted the world to think He is powerful, then dying a rebel’s death so easily and quickly at the hands of imperial Rome, well, this won’t do it. If Jesus wanted the world to think He is influential, dying alone, His followers cowering in fear, His friends abandoning Him—so unlike our song “What a Friend We Have In Jesus”–this won’t do it.

Our questions, our beliefs about Jesus, and about kings and rulers and leaders and devotion and lordship make us not the rebel humbly defending the dying Son of GOD on the one side of Jesus, but the first one on the other side. The one who asks:

“Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

For our devotion is to our powerful, ruler Jesus who saves us. We don’t often have ears to hear the gospel of sacrifice and love and hope. We rewrite this story in our minds to fulfill the first rebel’s self-interest. A Jesus that levitates down, pulls the nails out of the others’ hands, and heals them with a touch. He then, using some mind control powers, turns Rome into a Christian nation. Fast-forward to today, the U.S….Boom! We win!

We know that isn’t right, but it is the Christianity we seem so often to proclaim. With our own focus on ruling, controlling, dominating, winning—even if it is just arguments or about butts in pews. A powerful Jesus. Our king. Our ruler. Not only savior, but conqueror. A crusading king to make the world like He wants us. Which strangely looks a lot like we do.

Jesus never accepts the crown. Jesus never becomes king. A king can’t save us. Not from the evil GOD speaks of. The evil of our world and our ways and our kings. What saves us is not a king, but the kingdom of GOD. Jesus is too busy avoiding being a king—as He also avoids being a military leader, a politician, or a businessman. Not necessarily bad jobs, just not what Jesus was called to do.

Jesus came as a carpenter’s son. He worked as a teacher and a prophet and a healer. He didn’t impose rule, but recruited students.

These students spent their time learning. Learning to be teachers and prophets and healers just like Him. And when He was gone, these students kept learning. And they took on students. And they taught them to be teachers and prophets and healers. That’s how it came to us. How we have been called to become teachers and prophets and healers.

Some time sit with our patron, Paul’s letters. Read Galatians first, then the two letters to the Corinthians. Finish with Romans. Read them with eyes of a student and a teacher. Over the years between the writing of Galatians and Romans, you can hear Paul’s formation as he teaches his friends. Listen for his changing and growing. You can feel it in his writing.

These questions they ask, like the ones we ask, aren’t bad questions. They’re just founded on wrong assumptions. They assume Jesus wants to conquer and control. They assume Jesus wants a religious tradition to be the norm. They assume GOD’s plans are based on human ambitions and Western priorities.

Earlier in the gospel, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for blocking GOD’s plan by obsessing over Levitical Laws. The order, the traditions, the form of Christianity we’ve inherited are only as useful and grace-filled as our faith and focus on being something more than we currently are.

We end our church year this week with questions rather than answers because answers and contentment don’t lead to growth; questions do. Students learn from wrestling with questions asked of them, not answers given to them. Teachers have asked questions of students for thousands of years—standardized testing is a brand new obsession. Brain development in toddlers and preschoolers is shown to be enhanced much more by the frequency of questions we ask them, and stunted by the commands we shout at them.

Questions make us grow. It shouldn’t surprise us then that Jesus himself asked so many questions and answered so few.

GOD didn’t make us to seek answers, but to respond to the questions asked of us. Questions that challenge us to see ourselves and our neighbors as the very essence of GOD, despite our predilections. Questions that make our lives harder, but better; more full of hope and satisfaction and more like the one GOD dreams for us.

A dream we’re called to wrestle with and figure out how to make happen. A dream provoked from a simple question, much like this one:

What has GOD called us to do?